Ethiopia Tries Former Rulers In 70's Deaths

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Published: April 23, 1996

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, April 19—
As the leaders of the Marxist Government that once held this nation in an iron grip filed quietly into court, Hiwet Teklu could barely stand to look at them from her seat in the back of the cavernous room.

They were once the most powerful men in Ethiopia. They were also, she says, her son's killers.

Mrs. Teklu's son, Samson Allem, was a 22-year-old student in 1978 when the Red Terror, as the wave of political killings was known here, was under way. Like thousands of other students involved in a pro-democracy movement, he was imprisoned by Communist militiamen, tortured for 15 days and then shot to death in the dead of night, Mrs. Teklu said.

The next morning, his body was dumped near his mother's front door. A hand-lettered sign pinned to his chest said "Red Terror."

"These people are luckier than our sons and daughters," the 56-year-old merchant said, wringing her hands, in an interview outside court. "They are getting a fair trial."

After more than a year of delays and legal warmups, prosecutors finally began presenting witnesses this month in the trial of the Derg, the leftist military junta that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and ruled with Stalinist tactics until 1991, when it was driven from power by rebels from the northern province of Tigre.

The trial, the first of several, marks the start of what promises to be the most extensive judgment of war crimes since the Nuremberg trial of Nazis after World War II.

In the dock are 46 military leaders of the former Government. They stand accused not only of murder of individuals, but also of genocide and crimes against humanity. Another 22 are being tried in absentia, including former President Mengistu Haile Mariam, who fled into exile in Zimbabwe, which has refused to extradite him. All face the death penalty if convicted.

For the new Government, the trial also represents a chance to break Ethiopia's long tradition of autocracy -- whether imperial or Marxist. Officials here have argued that the only way to establish the rule of law and to end the cycle of coup and revolution is to hold former Government officials responsible for the political killings at an open trial.

"I think it is high time for Ethiopia to really break away from the past and to think in terms of democracy and the rule of law," said Girma Wakjira, the chief special prosecutor. "In Ethiopia, we used to have a saying: you can't plow the sky any more than you can accuse or try the king. There is now a clear message to the Government -- past, present or future -- that governments should be accountable to the people and answerable before the law."

Mr. Girma said the task of presenting the evidence is enormous and the trial, which began proceedings in December 1994, could last years, especially since it is only being held two days a week.

In addition to the 71 high-ranking junta members charged in the first indictment, about 1,700 other people are awaiting trial -- some 800 policemen, soldiers and mid-level administrators and about 900 members of local "revolutionary guards" who carried out many of the killings.

The prosecution plans to call at least 100 witnesses in the first trial. But the main evidence is documentary. An efficient bureaucracy, the junta and its regional subcommittees kept meticulous records of every meeting. The notes detail deliberations among officials about who was to be killed, imprisoned or tortured. There are even records of how many bullets and guns were used on each victim.

Prosecutors say they have hard evidence of at least 1,907 killings, as well as the torture of 99 other people, and the disappearance of 193.

Though the killings began right after the coup and lasted until the final days of the junta in May 1991, a majority of the killings took place during a wave of violence from 1976 to 1980.

University Students Became the Victims

Besides members of the royal family and Government officials, most of the victims were college students who belonged to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, an opposition group.

The stories recounted by the documents, family members and witnesses are horrific, prosecuors say. During the violence, mornings began with the wailing of mothers as new bodies of "counterrevolutionaries" were displayed in the streets.

In many cases, grieving parents were forced to pay to get the bodies of their children back from Menelik Hospital, where on some days as many as 1,000 bodies were stacked.

Some parents were imprisoned with their children and were compelled to watch while torturers tore out their fingernails and beat their feet until they could no longer walk, prosecutors said.

"It was not simply eliminating your enemy," said Mr. Wakjira, the chief special prosecutor. "It was showing savagery at its utmost."

No one knows precisely how many people were killed. The deaths began in 1974 with the ouster of Emperor Haile Selassie and the killing of scores of Government officials and titled nobility. The former Emperor was strangled to death in 1975 while under house arrest.

In Addis Ababa alone, a victims-rights group has registered at least 10,000 victims, and they estimate that the actual death toll is five times that number.